Tango project

From Tango Project www.tango-project.org

What is the Tango Desktop Project?

The Tango Desktop Project exists to create a consistent user experience for free and Open Source software with graphical user interfaces.

While the look and feel of an application is determined by many components the initial work has been done on unifying the look of the individual icon sets.

Tango defines a standard icon style guidelines document that applications and desktop enviroments can adhere to. Work has started on creating a new base icon theme based on a standard icon naming specification.

Nice project.. please keep an eye on it

emi

Thanks for the link... hmmm... wonder if some icons might show up in the future... lol

Thanks emi, I had come accross this project a few month ago... While I was attracted by the concept of making an effort to improve interfaces of opensource software, I am not sure this project is reaching its goals : interfaces go well beyond guidelines for icons design.

I am thinking information architecture and usability here...

One initiative which is more convincing (might just contribute to this one) :
http://openusability.org/projects/cms-uig/

Still a project, few contributors but a good idea to begin with...

That’s pretty cool. There are a lot of benefits to having a stable and consistant human interface, Apple, with their Mac OS, have prioritized this quite highly since the Mac OS 8 days, and It definitly has many benefits. You can read a few of them in the first paragraph of the Mac OS Human Interface Guidelines.

-sD-

I agree about having unified guidelines but if we all follow similar icon usage and design sets things would get pretty boring pretty quick. Look at all of the great things that have come about on the net just because people were willing to be different.

That’s why we have the ability to "customize" our end user experience. Everything from new desktop wallpapers, to Application Icons, to Faceplates for your cell phone. The real principal is that if you start with something consistant, then everyone is on the same baseline. Super helpful for tech support. If a user feels comfortable enough to go ahead and change an icon, then we will hope they have enough insight into what that icon is tied to, or at least a basic understanding of what happens when you "click" it.

This isn’t about forcing you to conform to a certain style, it just sets a lowst common denominator.

-sD-

ahhh, ok, now I see what you’re saying.

So, easy layman terms would be that you teah the end user that these are the tires and rims. Now go for it and cram in a set of 17 inch wheels on a car made for 13 inch wheels?

LOL!!!
Precisely!

-sD-

ok, now a little more seriously.

I wonder if this couldn’t also be applied to file locations and directory structures.

As an upgrade to my web 2.0 standards, more sites would follow a similar directory structure making it that much more easier to find things that you get used to finding in certain places ... not like M$ where you have to hunt all over the hard drive to find what you’re looking for but much more like Apple’s OSX where a package gets put in one place and is not expected to install to other out the way places.

phew...

What do you think?